Who doesn’t enjoy a good team building activity?  You might be surprised.  Especially if the activity requires any invasion of personal space or revelations of a personal nature.  For years I’ve been the person in my workplace to be the “team builder” for large group meetings–I love doing them.   Basically, that means I need to come up with an interactive, non-threatening game or activity that everyone will want to take part in; easy-peasy, right?!

Today, it was the Famous Couples game played with the 20-odd members of the leadership team.  A great variety of people are part of this group,  some have worked together for just a couple of years, while others have been together for more than ten.  The games are meant to give us a chance to have fun, and maybe, just maybe get to know each other better than through the daily routine we often get caught up in.

As I chose the couples’ names to write on my index cards, I knew that some of my willing participants may not recognize the “famous couple” right away.  I used names like Lucy & Ricky, Bonnie & Clyde, Romeo & Juliet, Tom & Giselle; the usual famous couples you might expect.  I purposely didn’t include last names on the cards, hoping for some funny pairings when the game was over. 

Who do you think the partner is for these names: Pebbles, Rocky, Ellen, Hermione.  If you guessed (respectively):  Bam-Bam, Adrienne, Portia, and Ron, you’re right!  The folks who got these names during the activity were not so lucky.  We all had a good laugh over who didn’t know that Mr. Grant and Mary were from the Mary Tyler Moore Show, or that Rocky didn’t belong (in this case) with Bullwinkle.   

I  learned to play these games as a college student, all those get-to-know-you activities from Freshman orientation.   I’ve put them to good use and have learned SO many more in the last 20 years. 

Today,  thanks goes to the Teambuilder Teachers I’ve had over these many years.  I’m still having fun playing!